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Showing posts with the label Ford Madox Brown

Tales of the Unexpected in Southampton

There are some familiar names and familiar paintings in  Art Then! British Painting, Sculpture and Drawing, 1910-1960 at Southampton City Art Gallery, but it's the unfamiliar that makes it especially worth the trip to a venue you might not normally consider for an exhibition. This show provides an excellent overview of art trends in this country in the first half of the 20th century. And it's free!  Southampton has a very good collection, but we often get the feeling that a lot of interesting works are in store behind closed doors. Pleasant surprises await when they finally see the light of the day, in this case in combination with a selection from the extensive Ingram Collection of modern British art. In all, there are more than 100 works by over 100 artists, demonstrating how the British reacted to the latest developments in art on the Continent. So let's start with a couple of hidden gems from the Southampton treasure trove, first of all a Landscape that really stoppe...
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Opening and Closing in February

A big theme to start us off this month at London's Royal Academy. Entangled Pasts, 1768-Now: Art, Colonialism and Change  brings together more than 100 contemporary and historic artworks to examine empire and slavery. Joshua Reynolds, John Singleton Copley and JMW Turner on the one hand, Lubaina Himid, Yinka Shonibare and John Akomfrah on the other. It's on from February 3 to April 28.  Also at the RA, in a free display from February 17, is Flaming June , Frederic Leighton's masterpiece, a sensuous artwork that's absolutely stunning when you see it in the flesh, as it were, even if you don't normally much like Victorian painting. Usually housed in a museum in Puerto Rico, it's on show alongside others by Leighton and his contemporaries and works that inspired him. No rush, it can be seen till January 12 next year.  There'll be less classical drapery and a lot more contemporary modishness on display in Sargent and Fashion at Tate Britain from February 22. Jo...
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Opening in November

Compiling this preview of new exhibitions for November, we're filled with the foreboding that quite a few may not actually open, at least not as scheduled, given the way the coronavirus pandemic is developing. Some shows that were due to open their doors have already been delayed.  It seems right to start, then, with what the Royal Academy in London describes as an exploration of grief, loss and longing through dark territories and raw emotions. Tracey Emin/Edvard Munch: The Loneliness of the Soul  finds Emin, who's long been fascinated with the Norwegian, selecting some 20 of his works from the Munch Museum in Oslo to sit alongside 25 of her own. On from November 15 to February 28, and then moving to the sparkling new Munch Museum , which opens in Oslo in the spring.  A new show at Tate Britain features the paintings of contemporary British artist  Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Fly in League with the Night  brings together about 80 works and will run from November 18 ...
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Lowry's Love for Ladies with the Kiss of a Snake

LS Lowry's best-known pictures of grim northern townscapes and huddled masses of stick-like figures rushing from the mill or to the football ground make it hard to credit that he was a Pre-Raphaelite at heart. And yet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown were Lowry's two favourite artists. Images of the Pre-Raphs' muses adorned the walls of his bedroom in his suburban home in Mottram on the outskirts of Manchester. He was president of the Rossetti Society. "I said to my father: 'I wish you'd buy me a Rossetti painting.' Now I've got about 12,'' Lowry said late in life. "I'm a Victorian all right, you know." Lowry and the Pre-Raphaelites , a free show at the Lowry in Salford, makes a stab at shedding more light on why these pictures meant so much to an artist whose own work was so very different. For us, it doesn't really succeed. Lowry was a very private man, and though we get to hear and read some of his own words...
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